Commercial aircraft may be damaged by bird strikes, ground handling equipment, debris, hail and other unplanned events. These events can result in holes and tears in aircraft skin, and damage to underlying stiffening substructure (e.g., frames, stiffeners and pad-ups). For instance, an aircraft's nose cab section may be damaged by a bird strike, a lower lobe may be damaged due to nose gear collapse, mid-section door surrounds may be damaged due to collisions with ground handling equipment, an end section lower lobe may be damaged by a tail strike, etc.
It is important to repair a damaged aircraft and return it to service as quickly as possible. Down time is very costly to an aircraft carrier, as an idle aircraft results in lost revenue.
Repair of a panelized aluminum aircraft is relatively straightforward. A damaged panel and underlying substructure are removed from the aircraft and replaced. If panels are available, the repair can be implemented relatively quickly.
Repair of composite commercial aircraft is not so straightforward, especially for large area repairs of one-piece components. Consider a fuselage made up of several one-piece composite barrel sections. Each barrel section includes skin, hoop frames, and stiffeners (e.g., stringers). The stiffeners may be integrated with the skin (by co-curing during fabrication). The hoop frames may be mechanically fastened to the skin. If a large area of a fuselage section becomes damaged, removing and replacing the entire barrel section would be prohibitively expensive, disruptive to production, and time consuming.
An infrastructure for large area repair of one-piece composite aircraft components is needed.